When a Korean friend promised to take me to a restaurant with "original" Korean food, I hardly knew what to expect. Original in his vocabulary did not mean novel or creative but pure, untouched, unblemished--Korean food that had not been adjusted to American tastes. We wound up at Shin Mi in Koreatown consuming enormous meals of meat, seafood and vegetables in forms that I had not seen before.Korean cuisine has evolved through centuries of social and political change. Originating from ancient agricultural and nomadic traditions in the Korean peninsula and southern Manchuria, Korean cuisine has evolved through a complex interaction of the natural environment and different cultural trends.

It's even more surprising when you consider that Korean food, unlike some of the more arcane cuisines we've recently embraced, does not contain ingredients that most Americans would consider strange. In the past 10 years, we have managed to overcome our suspicions about uncooked fish and have put a sushi bar on every street corner. Our enthusiasm for Thai cooking is so strong that we've overlooked our national aversion to sauces made from fermented fish. Indian pickles, Jamaican curries and Persian pilafs no longer seem exotic. Yet easy-to-love Korean cuisine, based on beef and grilled on the barbecue, is almost unknown in mainstream America.